


Threads

by Narcissisticpeacock



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Lena's experiences before Winston brings her back, dimensional hiatus, other characters mentioned only by name, tfw you get lost between dimensions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 17:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10621413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narcissisticpeacock/pseuds/Narcissisticpeacock
Summary: Lena lives life many times over while waiting for her own to resume.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline may be a bit off, but this was more sudden inspiration than anything.

Lena waves. She waves at Winston, at Angela, at Gérard and Amélie, and at all the others watching her board. She grins like mad and shouts down not to miss her too much, she'll be back soon. She's going to test "this hunk of junk" and be back for dinner.  
  
She takes her place in the cockpit.  
  
Things go wrong. And they go wrong fast.  
  
She's trying to maintain control, to keep it in the air as she disengages whatever didn't work. Alarms are blaring, lights are flashing. Adrenaline is the only thing keeping her from freezing up in fear.  
  
Part of her mind tells her she's going to live. To live and be some sort of hero just for making it through such danger. But most of her mind is lamenting her oncoming death. It tells her she's going to die. That she should've left a letter for those important to her-- a "just in case" that was desperately needed. But she's going to crash and die and no amount of regret will help her go back and write that letter so she fights the controls.  
  
She doesn't know where she is, where the jet has brought her, but she's so focused on surviving the crash that she doesn't care.  
  
And then something happens.  
  
All at once, the alarms are silent. The lights freeze as they are. Everything freezes. She can feel her body flung into space-- what space, she doesn't know. Her craft is broken around her. She floats amongst it before being lost in the inky darkness around her, so thick she may be able to cut it from the air.  
  
She can feel her body turn insubstantial. She doesn't exist anymore, not in any true sense of the word. She floats in some sort of... dimensional hiatus, not here nor there but still somehow everywhere. Her body feels like it's being pulled apart, cell by cell. She can feel worlds within and around her. She can hear them speaking, so loud it hurts. Layers upon layers of voices, not one standing out from another. She's being forced to listen to the sounds of the world, the chaos of infinity. She wants nothing more than silence in those moments.  
  
She closes her eyes and tries to focus, to pull voices from the droning. She can feel herself being tugged closer to some. The strength varies but the pain in her limbs and the fear in her mind shouts at her to choose one and simply follow it, no matter where it leads.  
  
Blindly, she reaches out and feels herself pulled in by the voices.  
  
The noise dies.  
  
The infinite babble of voices becomes a soft murmur in the back of her mind and she can hear the ones closest clearly.  
  
"He's gone out" she hears.  
  
She finds herself in a foreign room with people she's never met. She's looking through someone's eyes, someone who isn't her but is. She has no control. She merely listens. The hum of the voices in the back of her mind, the people in the room with her. The person-- the her-but-not-her-- stands. The body feels unfamiliar. Taller, heavier built.  
  
Her... host, responds to the other speaker and Lena can feel the anger in them bubble up, choking her like a noxious fume.  
  
The thread connecting her snaps and she's back in the darkness, in the roar of voices.  
  
She gasps for air, but there is none. She doesn't need it anyway. The strings pulling at her are all she has to focus on and the part of her brain not silenced by pain hopes that maybe they could lead her back to her place. Her time, her body, her friends.  
  
A terrifying thought occurs to her. What if she's dead? What if this is death? She's heard of societies that believe a person with no family to bury them has no way to the afterlife. She's an orphan; no parents, no siblings. What if this is her eternity? No one to honor her corpse with a burial so she was doomed to float in this... this darkness, this painful infinity.  
  
Without thinking, she reaches for another of the threads she could feel. Once more, the sound lessens and she finds herself connected to another. This person feels less foreign: they are her but not her, but much more her than the last person she'd been.  
  
She's suddenly looking out another set of eyes. Still not her own, but this time she can see the her-but-not-her. They're looking in a mirror and she can see the her-but-not-her is a small boy, no more than five. He's got dark skin and deep brown eyes. There's a woman standing behind. She's got a warm smile and a maternal aura.  
  
Though she looks nothing like Angela, that's who Lena thinks of. Sadness bubbles up in her at the thought of never seeing Angela again.   
  
The sorrow seems to seep into her host, the boy who is her but can't be. Tears appear in his eyes and he turns from the mirror to bury his face against the woman's dress.  
  
Her guilt for causing it snaps the thread between them and she's pulled away. Back into the loud nothingness.  
  
She tries to cry out but she can't hear herself over the unending murmur of infinite voices. She claws out, needing to escape the agony she had so briefly forgotten. She grabs hold of another strand and is dragged into another self.  
  
This time, she's brought to light in chaos. The sharp crack of a gun is close by and she can feel the miasma of fear around whoever she's clinging to. Her host is on a battlefield-- dug into a trench, fearing for life in some war or other. She can feel his fear and sadness and how he wants it all to end. He wants to be home with his family but he's bleeding in some disgusting pit, waiting for someone to find him.  
  
Lena aches for him, or maybe as him. Whatever common link they share, be it mind, body, or even soul, makes her feel his pain too strongly. They both want to be home, but this isn't home. This is hell.  
  
Too scared and too sad, Lena pulls herself away from him.  
  
Back into the void.  
  
She doesn't know which is worse; the noise, or the threads tearing at her body. They try to lay claim to her, try to say "mine! she belongs here, she is mine!".  
  
Before she can choose a thread, one becomes a rope and pulls her. She wants to resist but she can't.  
  
The noise doesn't dull like it's supposed to. She has no body-- there is no version of her here, but there are people. There are candles and darkness and the scent of lavender. The people are seating in a circle. They called to her, forced her to come. She has no form. She's in pain and her cries make the candles flicker and threaten to go out. The people try to speak to her but it's lost in the ever present noise that's been echoing in her ears since her flight went down.  
  
She cries and screams and begs for help but nothing is done. Perhaps they hear her, or perhaps not. She is only released when the candles go out and for a split second, Lena knows they heard her.  
  
And she's floating again. She has no energy now, can no longer react to the pain. Her body is flickering in and out. A thought occurs to her. What if this is myself leaving existence? What if I no longer exist?  
  
She reaches for another thread.  
  
She finds herself with a body that feels more familiar than before. She has little control-- she's a ghost, simply passing through. Her host is a woman in heavy armor. She stands before an open doorway, hesitant to enter. Lena urges her-- herself?-- on. There is another woman in this room. She's pretty. Long, dark hair goes down her back. (Lena thinks of Amelie and holds back a want to cry).  
  
Lena can't hear the words spoken, but she can feel them. There's some sort of want hanging in the air and a strong affection that neither seems to realize is mutual. Lena tried to will her host to act on it but there's only so much a disembodied spirit can do. The other her steps closer to the dark haired woman, but Lena doesn't know if it's because of her. Still, she urges her other self on, hoping that whatever emotions she can feel will be acted upon.  
  
Only just as the women meet in an embrace, Lena's connection snaps again.  
  
The roar seems louder after the quiet moment she had witnessed. Her mind is muddled and she tries to remember who she is and what happened.  
  
 _I am Lena._ She thinks. _I am Lena, I am Lena, I am Lena._  
  
Her hand lands on another connection and she is lost to another world once more.  
  
This other self stood by a fire, crudely built homes surrounding it. Lena feels something new here, some sense that her presence is felt. This person is asking for something, needing guidance. She has no energy to give anymore than her base values. The things that make Lena who she is, her bravery and commitment, her tenacity and strength. She leaves impressions of them on this other self, she hears herself referred to as "ancestor". She smells something sharp and wild, something that reminds her of sage. The thread snaps again.  
  
 _I am... I am Lena._ She thinks. Terror has given way to a mute sort of acceptance. _I am Lena... I am Lena..._  
  
All she can remember is her name and faint recollections of people she isn't sure exist. She holds on to the name, holds on to the impressions of people she's not sure she knows.  
  
She can't tell if the threads are pulling her or if she's choosing them. Again and again, she's pulled in and then released. Sometimes her connection is only for seconds, sometimes She watches whole lives unfold. She can't tell if she's only watching or if she's living them herself. Her mantra has changed and been forgotten as she travels through lives and minds.  
  
 _I am... I..._ She tries to think but she can't remember. She doesn't know what name she has, she doesn't know who she is. Too many lives lived. _I... I... I'm... who?_  
  
No longer does the roar of voices seem loud, no longer does she feel afraid in the void. Uneasiness is the only thing to settle in her bones, if she has them anymore. She can't feel her body, only the constant tugging of lives she's yet to live, of people she's yet to be.  
  
But then something changes. She feels one of the connections grow. She doesn't have to reach for it. It pulls her in, makes the other connections feel weak, snaps some completely. This brings back the fear. She has only those, every thread that snaps breaks what she now knows.  
  
Suddenly she's in a body that feels both familiar and foreign. She gasps and cries.  
  
She doesn't even speak English when she's anchored in. The words bleed from her lips and she's trying to remember who she is and how she speaks. She can still hear the roar of the voices-- her voices, so many they can't be counted. They exit her lips in mangled phrases, different languages, some dead, some yet to be created.  
  
As the roar fades, she can't breathe. She didn't need to before and now her body must remember. Voices, ones that aren't hers, start to be heard.  
  
She hears someone familiar but not. She doesn't know what life of hers this voice knew, she doesn't know what's happening.  
  
With no warning, her body fades again and the roar is back, begging, pleading for the pain to stop. Every cell is in agony, forced into an existence it no longer knows.  
  
It takes time for the roar to fade and again she hears that familiar but not voice. She can't conceive of her own body, too sure that this is another her-but-not-her.  
  
More words spill from her lips but she doesn't know what they mean anymore. The voice tries to sooth her, and another joins it. It feels like hours but could have only been minutes when she remembers names. Angela. Winston.  
  
The roar dies to nothing and she's left laying on a table with an aching silence in her ears. She's not sure who she is, but she remembers the two in the room with her. Friends, people she can trust.  
  
There's a weight on her chest and she feels breathless. Someone is talking to her, she realizes. She falls unconcious before she can listen.  
  
When she wakes, it's three days later. She knows this because they tell her. She feels odd in her own body. Silence sits in her for hours and she has to be reminded of her own name more than once.  
  
Strange memories torment her, but she's only got vague feelings left from the dimensional hiatus. Dark dreams and whispered words from people she'd never met.  
  
She tries to hold onto them. Each memory of something she never did should be honoured. She feels her own death in each, but she doesn't know why. She finds the room she's given to sleep in too silent.  
  
It takes time but she remembers things about herself. Remembers her friends. The memories of her other selves fade until all she has is a nagging feeling she's missing something.  
  
She's filled in on what's happened. They tell her about Gérard's death, Amélie's disappearance. Of the omnics, of Talon, and so much more. They tell her about the thing strapped to her chest and how it keeps her from falling back into nothing. Chronical disassociation. Talk to her about the severe ptsd she's gained.  
  
Her dreams are sometimes the things she shouldn't remember, but she wakes up and they trickle from her memory again.  
  
It's weeks, but she's released. Told to go home and try to find some semblance of normalcy. They make sure she reaches her apartment. Angela tells her that she's always there if she needs to talk. Winston invites her to dinner the following week.  
  
She sits down on her couch when they leave. She spends hours staring at nothing. Tries to remember the lives that she lived outside of her own.  
  
Her mantra returns to her.  
  
 _I am Lena._ She thinks. _I am Lena._  
  
 _I am Lena. And so much more._

**Author's Note:**

> Brownie points to those who know where I got the term "dimentional hiatus" from.  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
